The present invention relates to data transfer over networks, and more specifically, this invention relates to data transfer policies for transferring data between different locations coupled to a Wide Area Network (WAN).
For a variety of reasons including disaster recovery, computer systems may be separated across geographic distances. Establishing and/or maintaining connectivity between these geographically separated systems may include the deployment of WAN technology.
Data storage systems, e.g., WANs, allow for data to be stored in multiple different storage sites and/or across multiple storage devices. Despite being stored in various locations, all, subsets, some, etc. of the data included in a data storage system may be accessed from a plurality of different locations, e.g., terminals. For example, computer systems may be located in different locations which are separated by varying distances. While this separation allows for disaster recovery should one of the computer systems fail, the distance between the computer systems has also introduced inefficiency when transferring data between storage locations. Moreover, these inefficiencies are exacerbated as the amount of data transferred between storage locations increases over time.